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“Don’t ram the hard things!”
That’s the advice given in the little manual that comes with the Brando
SOAP MP4 player. Words of wisdom or just a case of Chenglish? Well, the
SOAP moniker seem to have been chosen intentionally as there are some
semblances to a (small) bar of soap with this well-rounded PMP.
The price at USD99 for the 2GB model seems cheap enough so how does it stack up in useability and value for money?
Let’s come clean…
There’s usually some excitement in the unboxing process – even for this old and jaded reviewer. But not this time. Brando has a name for inexpensive gear – dare we say: cheap gear?
That’s probably an asset for the masses who aspire to iPod listening pleasures but can’t afford the associated price tag. Brando caters well for them, bringing out feature-rich gadgets at below-Wal-Mart prices. The SOAP range of PMPs is a prime example.
The pink box (what’s the obsession with pink?) is a generic package apparently.
The ecstatic lady pictured on the front sports a non-descript MP3 player but certainly not the SOAP. The wording on the box is also very general: MP4 Digital Player.
Memory capacity (tick the appropriate box) indicated on the side range from 128MB (what year was that again?) to 4GB…
Fortunately, the unit itself is not pink! Neither are the so-called “unique” Stereo Earphones.
They are iPod-white. So at least people might suspect you’re high on Apple-juice instead of listening to what turns out to be a rather ordinary MP3 player.
The SOAP is fairly small, and thin. A good thing in my book unless it interferes with useability.
The wall charger is miniscule and is of the USB cable variety. In other words you can plug in a USB cable in the charger and plug in the mini-USB end into the SOAP. The charger even has two LEDs: green and red. Another plus.
Time to Tango
OK: first things first: how do we switch it on? No power switch on the front but there’s a slider on the back, marked ON OFF. To activate the SOAP press the Play button (center of the 5-way button) for a few secs. The unit starts up quickly. Ah, another plus compared to the Sansa e260 we reviewed recently. The Welcome screen splashes around for another couple of seconds and defaults to the Music screen.
This is one of nine screen options. I told you this thing could sing and dance, eh?
The other options are: Movie, Record, Voice, FM Radio, Photo, Setup, E-Book and Game. All Intro screens are a bit animated and rather colourful. Yes, I mean loud and with garish colour schemes. We focussed our review mainly on the Music section as that is why people buy these sort of players for. The other sections all work OK and if you can use them on occasion than this is a bonus.
One observation: the menus and UI are hard to navigate. The M button (top of the pad) probably indicates Menu or Mode. It takes a while to figure out how the interface is structured. The manual is no help here either – on the contrary!
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There are two songs provided on the SOAP. One is The Eagles’ Hotel California with very nice acoustical guitar intro-ing this live concert piece. The sound quality is reasonably good. Certainly quite OK for the non-discerning ears. One cool feature is the display of the lyrics while the song is playing. Karaoke fans are well catered for.
The second song, the soccer song The Cup of Life, with a mix of Spanish and English lyrics will bring aspiring karaoke singers undone. When they sing in Spanish the text displays in English and vice versa…
Lyrics have to be downloaded separately and must have exactly the same title as the song.
Another point is that volume cannot be adjusted unless you pause the song first while in karaoke mode.
The same with the lack of info (like time to play, etc.) which can only be accessed with the lyrics off.
A word on the screen. The OLED screen is certainly bright and colourful enough. The resolution is OK but not really enough for use as an e-book reader.
There’s no way to keep the screen on for longer than just about 30 secs unless in karaoke mode.
You can choose from 7 EQ settings and also from 7 playing modes like Random, Repeat, etc.
Battery Life
Charging the SOAP takes about 90 mins. With the screen normally not backlit during playing this will give you plenty of endurance before the battery itself sings its swan song… With the two charging options that should not be much of a problem. Whilst charging you cannot listen to any songs but by that time wouldn’t you need a break yourself, eh? After listening to five albums straight the battery was still plenty full.
So what is the battery life? Brando chooses not to tell you. Truth is it varies totally with what you doing of course so the question is a bit academic. I’ll tell you next week…
Conclusion
If you look for brilliant engineering or fantastic sound at a bargain basement price, look elsewhere (I’m still looking too…). No, the Brando SOAP at best is a very average MP3 player at a decent price (USD99) so you don’t need to feel ripped off. The multitude of features are interesting but only just. If you don’t have high expectations you won’t be disappointed.
Short Summary of Specifications
1.8-inch OLED display with 65K Color
High Speed USB 2.0
2GB of built-in memory
FM player
Voice recorder (up to 8 hours)
1.5 hours of charge time
Supported formats include MP3, WMA, WMV, ASF, and WAV
Dimensions: 75 x 39 x 7.9 mm
Weight: 45 grams
Available in White or Black
Rec. rate: 8khz-128bps
Record format: Mp3 (32kbps)
Rec. time: 8hours MP3, WMA
Earphone output: 40mw*2/16R/-75db
MP3: 8k~320k
WMA: 32kbps-380kbps
Audio frequency: 20Hz~20KHz
SNR: 85db
Battery: Built-in rechargeable polymer battery
Language selection: English, Korean, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Czech, Denmark, Polish, Russian, Turkish, Hebrew, German, Portuguese, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese
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